Union discontent, yes: but it's not the 1970s

After threatened autumns, winters and springs of industrial discontent, the tabloids and the unions are joining forces again to threaten Gordon Brown - and the wider public - with a summer of public sector strikes. As ministers call for restraint, the Conservatives and their media allies are promoting fanciful comparisons with the turbulent 1970s.

That claim is specious for a host of reasons, not least the constricting battery of Thatcherite legal constraints which still curb union militancy. Put another way, 1m working days were lost in 2007 - 250,00 days up on 2006 and the highest figure since the council workers' strike of 2002 doubled the 1990s average of 660,000.

Low by EU standards, that compares with 7.2m in the 1980s (27.1m for the miners' strike year of 1984); the 70s average of 12.9m spiked at 29.5m in the real 1978-79 winter of discontent that finished off Labour's last government. In the general strike of 1926, 162m were lost. Even in tranquil 1957 - just before Peter Sellers played shopfloor militant Fred Kite in the satirical comedy I'm All Right Jack - the total was 8.4m.

The trend is edging up again. Why now? The rising cost of food and fuel, which everyone notices, is the main reason, especially compared with the modest 2% to 3% level of pay settlements, all sides agree. The official CPI rose to 3.3% in May, the rival RPI to 4.3%, neither greatly trusted. Shell oil drivers struck and got 14% over two years.

But overtones of political grievance are also visible to worry Labour politicians. Younger public sector workers - 58.8 % are unionised compared with only 16.6% in the private sector - have never known mass unemployment or 20% inflation. Older ones discount the (modest) gains since 1997 and smell weakness they can exploit, the more so because the unions are again Labour's chief donors. Yesterday David Cameron taunted Brown about having to restore strikers' rights: he won't give much.

"It's the general buggeration factor; unions feel they've been messed around and that the government is going down the plughole anyway. So they might as well have a go," admits one Labour MP. Health and local government workers, as well as teachers, police and prison officers, have been making militant noises. "If we lose control of pay, we're finished," MPs say.

Benefit offices, museums, even courts are suffering one-day stoppages. Refuse collection, school dinners, council tax processing and other council services will be hit after Unison moved when its members rejected 2.45% on a modest 27% turnout. Many earn less than £6.50 an hour.

Social solidarity is weaker in a more individualistic culture, when union membership is barely half its 1979 peak of 13.2m. But 1.2m NHS workers voted to accept an 8.1% deal over three years. Pilots and rail signallers also settled.

Yet resentment is strong against fat-cat salaries. The Tories are both threatening further anti-union laws and (like Mrs Thatcher in opposition) encouraging the reopening of pay claims.

Brown and Alistair Darling are entering delicate, uncharted territory with much to lose.